rtheories of international regimes

Integrating Theories of International RegimesAuthor(s): Andreas Hasenclever, Peter Mayer, Volker RittbergerReviewed work(s):Source: Review of International Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Jan., 2000), pp. 3-33Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20097653 .Accessed: 03/01/2012 12:05

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Review of International Studies (2000), 26, 3-33 Copyright ? British International Studies Association

Integrating theories of international regimes ANDREAS HASENCLEVER, PETER MAYER, AND VOLKER RITTBERGER1

Abstract. Several years after students of international relations started to ask questions about

international regimes, there continues to be a strong scholarly interest in the principles, norms,

rules, and decision-making procedures that govern the behaviour of states in particular issue

areas. Indeed, international regimes have been a major focus of theoretical and empirical research in International Relations for many years now. Three schools of thought have shaped the discussion thus far: neoliberalism, which bases its analyses on constellations of interests;

realism, which treats power relations among states as its key variable; and cognitivism, which

emphasizes actors' causal and social knowledge. Each of these schools of thought has

articulated and defended a distinct view on the origins, stability, and consequences of

international regimes. In this article we explore the possibilities of achieving additional

explanatory power in the study of international regimes by working toward a synthesis of

these schools of thought.

Introduction

For more than twenty years international regimes or 'sets of [...] principles, norms,

rules, and decision making procedures around which actors' expectations converge in a given area of international relations'2 have been on the agenda of International

Relations.3 International regimes are a major type of international institution.4

Regimes are deliberately constructed, partial international orders on either a

regional or a global scale, which are intended to remove specific issue-areas of inter

national politics from the sphere of self-help behaviour. By creating shared expecta tions about appropriate behaviour and by upgrading the level of transparency in the

issue-area, regimes help states (and other actors) to cooperate with a view to reaping

joint gains in the form of additional welfare or security. If we classify international

1 This article further develops a couple of ideas we put forward in the concluding chapter of our book, Theories of International Regimes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Earlier versions were presented and discussed at a conference on 'International Politics and Transnational Relations', Mexico City, 1 December 1997 and in seminars at the Department of Political Science of Stanford

University and the Centre for International Relations of the University of T?bingen. The authors are

grateful to Helmut Breitmeier, Gary Goertz, Stephen Krasner, Petra Rotes and all the other

individuals who, on these and other occasions, commented on the paper. 2

Stephen D. Krasner, 'Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes as Intervening Variables', in Krasner (ed.), International Regimes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), p. 2.

3 The seminal article is John Gerard Ruggie, 'International Responses to Technology: Concepts and

Trends', International Organization, 29 (1975), pp. 557-83. 4 For this typology of international institutions see Robert O. Keohane, International Institutions and

State Power: Essays in International Relations Theory (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989), pp. 3-4.

3

4 Andreas Hasenclever, Peter Mayer, and Volker Rittberger

issue-areas by the dominant value being at issue,5 we find that regimes exist in all

domains of contemporary world politics: there are security regimes such as the

nuclear non-proliferation regime;6 economic regimes such as the international trade

regime;7 environmental regimes such as the international regime for the protection of

the stratospheric ozone layer;8 and, finally, human rights regimes such as the one

based on the European Convention on Human Rights.9 In the early 1980s, less than ten years after it had been launched, regime analysis

had turned into something of a cottage industry within International Relations10 as

scholars began to study more systematically than before the conditions under which

international regimes wax and wane, in the process developing theories of regime formation and change. At the same time, they asked questions about the political

significance of international regimes: How effective are the agreed-upon norms and

rules by which we define regimes? Are they reliable predictors for actors' behaviour or does narrowly defined self-interest induce actors to ignore regime injunctions

whenever they turn out to be inconvenient? And how resilient or robust are regimes to exogenous challenges or shocks in the issue-area or beyond? For example, is an

erosion of the power structure that prevailed when the regime was created bound to

lead to a collapse of the regime as well? Or do regimes assume a 'life of their own'

acquiring a measure of independence of the conditions that facilitated their forma

tion and shaped the principles and norms that were adopted in the 'constitutional

contract' of the regime? And, finally, what is it that makes some regimes more

effective (or more robust) than others?11

Some of the early noise that accompanied the rise of regime analysis has dimin

ished; however, this does not mean the field has ceased to exist. On the contrary, the

fact that the regime concept is no longer the object of heated scholarly controversies

should be taken as an indication that the study of international regimes (or, more

5 See Ernst-Otto Czempiel, Internationale Politik: Ein Konfliktmodell (Paderborn: Sch?ningh, 1981),

p. 198. 6 See Roger K. Smith, 'Explaining the Non-Proliferation Regime: Anomalies for Contemporary

International Relations Theory', International Organization, 41 (1987), pp. 253-82; and Harald

M?ller, 'Regimeanalyse und Sicherheitspolitik: Das Beispiel Nonproliferation', in Beate Kohler-Koch

(ed.), Regime in den internationalen Beziehungen (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1989), pp. 277-313. 7 See Jock A. Finlayson and Mark W. Zacher, 'The GATT and the Regulation of Trade Barriers:

Regime Dynamics and Functions', in Krasner (ed.), International Regimes, pp. 273-314; and Michael

J. Trebilcock and Robert Howse, The Regulation of International Trade: Political Economy and Legal Order (London: Routledge, 1995).

8 See Edward A. Parson, 'Protecting the Ozone Layer', in Peter M. Haas, Robert O. Keohane, and

Marc A. Levy (eds.), Institutions for the Earth: Sources of Effective Environmental Protection

(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), pp. 27-73; and Helmut Breitmeier, Wie entstehen globale

Umweltregime? Der Konfliktaustrag zum Schutz der Ozonschicht und des globalen Klimas (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 1996).

9 See Martin List, 'Rechtstaatlichkeit in (West)Europa?Eine regimeanalytische Betrachtung', Politische Vierteljahresschrift, 33 (1992), pp. 622^2; and Andrew Moravcsik, 'Explaining International Human Rights Regimes: Liberal Theory and Western Europe', European Journal of International Relations, 1 (1995), pp. 157-89.

10 See Stephan Haggard and Beth A. Simmons, 'Theories of International Regimes', International

Organization, 41 (1987), pp. 491-517; and Marc A. Levy, Oran R. Young, and Michael Z?rn, 'The

Study of International Regimes', European Journal of International Relations, 1 (1995), pp. 267-330. 11 For the distinction between effectiveness and robustness as dimensions of the significance of

international regimes see Hasenclever, Mayer, and Rittberger, Theories, pp. 2-3. The term

'constitutional contract' is borrowed from Oran R. Young, 'Political Leadership and Regime Formation: On the Development of Institutions in International Society', International Organization, 45 (1991), p. 282.

Integrating theories of international regimes 5

broadly, the study of international institutions) has matured and become a firmly established sub-field of International Relations.12 Nor should we conclude that

regime analysis is stagnating; indeed, a good deal of interesting work has been pub lished over the last decade.13 Thus, issue-areas that earlier had attracted little atten

tion from students of regimes have become major foci of empirical research. One

example is international environmental politics before and after the Rio Conference

of 1992.14 And in response to the charge of state-centrism often brought against

regime analysis,15 attempts have been made to consider more systematically the role

of non-state actors in bringing about, implementing, and developing international

regimes.16 Thus, students of regimes have addressed so-called epistemic communi

ties, i.e. transnational networks of issue experts who share both a body of causal

knowledge regarding the physical or social processes that require international

action and a vision of a better public policy which they seek to help materialize.

Influential epistemic communities have been identified in diverse international issue

areas, ranging from the protection of regional seas to arms control.17 What is more, scholars have begun to inquire into the theoretical possibility and empirical reality of transnational regimes, i.e. normative institutions of a transboundary scope created and maintained by private actors among themselves. Examples of such

private international regimes include the rule-based cooperation of large trans

national companies in sectors such as insurance, banking, or shipping.18 Basically three schools of thought have shaped the discussion of regimes:19

neoliberalism, which bases its analyses on constellations of interests; realism, which treats power relations among states as its key variable; and cognitivism, which

emphasizes actors' causal and social knowledge.20 Each of these three schools of

12 See Robert O. Keohane, 'The Analysis of International Regimes: Towards a European-American Research Programme', in Volker Rittberger (ed.), Regime Theory and International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 23^5; and Volker Rittberger, 'Research on International Regimes in

Germany: The Adaptive Internalization of an American Social Science Concept', in Rittberger (ed.),

Regime Theory, pp. 3-22. 13 For a recent collection of papers dealing with different aspects of international regimes from diverse

theoretical angles see Rittberger (ed.), Regime Theory. 14

See, e.g., Peter M. Haas, Robert O. Keohane, and Marc A. Levy, Institutions for the Earth: Sources of

Effective International Environmental Protection (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993); Karen T. Litfin, Ozone Discourse: Science and Politics in Global Environmental Cooperation (Irvington, NY: Columbia

University Press, 1994); Ronald B. Mitchell, International Oil Pollution at Sea: Environmental Policy and Treaty Compliance (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1994); and Oran R. Young, Global Governance:

Drawing Insights from the Environmental Experience (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997). 15 See Susan Strange, 'Cave! Hie Dragones: A Critique of Regime Analysis', in Krasner (ed.),

International Regimes, pp. 349-51; and Gerd Junne, 'Beyond Regime Theory', Acta Pol?tica, Ti

(1992), pp. 17-21. 16 See Berhard Zangl, 'Politik auf zwei Ebenen: Hypothesen zur Bildung internationaler Regime',

Zeitschrift f?r Internationale Beziehungen, 1 (1994), pp. 279-312. 17 See Peter M. Haas (ed.), Knowledge, Power, and International Policy Coordination, in Special Issue of

International Organization, 46:1 1992). 18 See Virginia Haufler, Dangerous Commerce: Insurance and the Management of International Risk

(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997); Charles Lipson, 'Bankers' Dilemmas: Private

Cooperation in Rescheduling Sovereign Debts', in Kenneth A. Oye (ed.), Cooperation under Anarchy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 200-25; and Mark W. Zacher with Brent A.

Sutton, Governing Global Networks: International Regimes for Transportation and Communication

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 19 For an early observation of this pattern see Krasner, 'Structural Causes', pp. 1-2, 5-10. 20 See also Oran R. Young and Gail Osherenko, 'The Formation of International Regimes: Hypotheses

and Cases', in Young and Osherenko (eds.), Polar Politics: Creating International Environmental

Regimes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 1-21.


thought has articulated and defended a distinct view on the origins, stability, and

consequences of international regimes. At the same time, they have engaged one

another in extended, and often fascinating, intellectual discourses.21 Although the

competition between neoliberals, realists, and cognitivists within the study of

international regimes no doubt has been a healthy one, a case can be made that it is

time students of international regimes explored more systematically the possibilities of a synthesis or division of labour among the three schools of thought. The prima

facie argument for such an endeavour is that each of the three schools offers a

coherent and plausible vision of international regimes and is capable of bolstering its preferred interpretation with considerable empirical support, while none of this

evidence is compelling, or strong enough to establish one school as a clear winner.

This ambiguous state of affairs suggests the possibility that the variables separately

emphasized by the three schools?interests, power, and knowledge?somehow interact in bringing about and shaping international regimes. If so, theories of

international regimes that play off one variable against the other two are ipso facto truncated. As a result, they are likely to prove misleading in many situations, both as

predictive devices and as guides for foreign policy. By the same token, the promise that a theoretical synthesis holds is that it allows for a more complete or more

accurate explanation of international regimes. This consideration justifies an attempt to combine elements of neoliberal, realist,

and cognitivist approaches to international regimes to form a more complex theory. It does not guarantee its success, however. Thus, the loss of parsimony that comes

with adding variables to a given theoretical framework, may not be overcompensated

by the gain in explanatory power, resulting in a theory that provides less rather than

more explanatory leverage than the original formulation.22 Furthermore, variables

must not merely be lumped together, they must be integrated, with their mutual

relationship clearly specified. Otherwise there is a significant danger of ending up with some sort of 'grab-bag' theorizing, where the 'theory' consists of a set of

unrelated explanatory variables and 'explaining' amounts to trying out independent variables until one is found that matches the case at hand. Finally, those interested in a synthesis of concepts and assumptions originating in different schools of thought

must take care that the resulting more complex theory still forms a coherent whole

and remains internally consistent.

In this article we offer some ideas on what a synthesis avoiding these pitfalls

might look like, or rather: how students of international regimes interested in such a

synthesis might proceed. More specifically, we undertake to defend three

propositions:

21 See David A. Baldwin (ed.), Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1993); Friedrich V. Kratochwil and Edward D. Mansfield (eds.), International Organization: A Reader (Glasgow: HarperCollins, 1994); James Der Derian (ed.), International Theory: Critical Investigations (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995); and Charles W. Kegley, Jr. (ed.), Controversies in International Relations Theory: Realism and the Neoliberal Challenge

(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995). 22 For the distinction between parsimony and explanatory leverage see Gary King, Robert O. Keohane,

and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 29-30, 104.


(1) Neoliberalism and realism not only share a commitment to rationalism23 as a

metatheoretical stance, but may fruitfully work together when it comes to

explaining international regimes, thus offering the prospect of a more unified

rationalist theory of international institutions.

(2) There is a distinct strand within the cognitivist school, which we refer to as

'weak cognitivism', which can serve as an analytically necessary supplement to, and, as such, can be incorporated into, the rationalist account of inter

national regimes.

(3) A 'grand synthesis'?i.e. one that includes the more radical, or 'strong', forms

of cognitivism as well?is not on the cards. 'Strong cognitivists' have onto

logical and epistemological commitments that are strictly opposed to those of

neoliberals and realists. In this case, continued intellectual competition is both more likely and more desirable than ill-fated attempts to merge two mutually exclusive paradigms of inquiry.

To provide the necessary background to our argument we begin by outlining the essence of each of the three schools of thought in regime analysis.

Schools of thought in the study of international regimes24

Neoliberalism

Neoliberals emphasize the role of international regimes in helping states to realize common interests.25 In so doing, they portray states as rational egoists who care only for their own (absolute) gains. International politics is not the realm of pure conflict.

Often cooperation would make all participants better off, but it is hard to achieve

owing to the pervasive uncertainty that characterizes international life. In particular, states are uncertain as to whether they can rely on their cooperation partners' promises. By way of increasing mutual transparency of behaviour and linking issues

through time (thus making reciprocal strategies applicable),26 regimes reduce this

uncertainty: they mitigate the fear of cheating or being exploited by the other

parties, and thus make it easier for states to embark on collaborative ventures.

Neoliberals have drawn heavily on economic theories of institutions focusing on

the role of information and transaction costs.27 Regimes are likened to investments

that are the more profitable to states (and hence the more likely to be made by

23 Rationalism in international relations theory portrays states as self-interested, goal-seeking actors

whose behaviour can be accounted for in terms of the maximization of individual utility. 24 For a book-length study of the three schools of thought in contemporary regime analysis see

Hasenclever, Mayer, and Rittberger, Theories. 25 See Robert O. Keohane, 'The Demand for International Regimes', in Krasner (ed.), International

Regimes, pp. 141-71; Arthur A. Stein, 'Coordination and Collaboration: Regimes in an Anarchic

World', in Krasner (ed.), International Regimes, pp. 115^0; and Robert Axelrod and Robert O.

Keohane, Achieving Cooperation under Anarchy: Strategies and Institutions', in Oye (ed.), Cooperation, pp. 226-54.

26 See Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984). 27

Transaction costs are the costs associated with the conclusion, monitoring and enforcement of

agreements.


them), the higher is the 'issue-density' in the issue-area concerned.28 Game-theoretic

models such as the Prisoner's Dilemma or the Battle of the Sexes29 have been

applied to characterize constellations of interests that underly different types of

international regimes (e.g. 'collaboration regimes' based on formal contracts and

'coordination regimes' based on conventions) and also affect the likelihood of a

regime being created in the first place.30 Thus, the 'structure of the situation' (defined in terms of the nature of the game that is being played) is held in large part

responsible for the ease and the probability of regime creation in situations of mixed

motives (where common and divergent interests coexist).31

Deliberately appropriating essential elements of the realist approach to world

politics, neoliberals have challenged the plausibility of structural realism's scepticism vis-?-vis international institutions. They attempt to show that this scepticism cannot

in fact be based on the assumptions realists make about the nature of states and the

international system. Regimes help self-interested states to coordinate their behav

iour such that they may avoid collectively suboptimal outcomes, and states can be

shown to have an interest in maintaining existing regimes even when the factors that

brought them into being are no longer operative. Neoliberals point out that, although states lack a sense of obligation, they think

twice before they violate agreed-upon rules. States with a reputation for oppor tunism will find it more difficult in the future to be accepted as partners in a

potentially beneficial regime. Moreover, since international institutions are difficult

to construct, states will hesitate to put an existing regime at risk (e.g. by making the

continuation of their cooperation conditional on fundamental changes in the

regime). In other words: international regimes are resilient because they embody 'sunk costs', i.e. they are political investments which cannot easily be recovered and

put to other uses.32

Realism

Although structural realists in the Waltzian vein33 have paid little attention to

international institutions, which they see as affecting international politics only on

28 See Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 79-80. 29 Game theory originated in economics and employs formal models to study strategic interaction.

Games are defined in terms of the preference orderings of independent, utility-maximizing actors

(who, moreover, are subject to certain knowledge conditions). The Prisoner's Dilemma is a

symmetrical game with two players, where each prefers mutual cooperation (CC) to mutual non

cooperation (DD), fears most that his own cooperation is unrequited (CD), and desires most that

only the other player cooperates (DC). Battle of the Sexes is also a symmetrical game with the

characteristic preference ordering: DC>CD>DD>CC (where '>' stands for 'is preferred over'). 30 See Stein, 'Coordination'; Duncan Snidal, 'Coordination Versus Prisoners' Dilemma: Implications for

International Cooperation and Regimes', American Political Science Review, 79 (1985), pp. 923^2

and Lisa Martin, 'Interests, Power, and Multilateralism', International Organization, 46 (1992), pp. 765-92.

31 See Michael Z?rn, Interessen und Institutionen in der internationalen Politik: Grundlegung und

Anwendung des situationsstrukturellen Ansatzes (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 1992), ch. 2. 32 See Keohane, After Hegemony, pp. 98-106. 33 See Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: Random House, 1979). See also

John J. Mearsheimer, 'The False Promise of International Institutions', International Security, 19

(1995), pp. 5^9.


the margin, other, 'post-classical' or 'modified structural', realists34 acknowledge that

regime-based interstate cooperation is a reality that is in need of explanation. Realist

students of international regimes such as Robert Gilpin, Stephen Krasner or Joseph Grieco argue that power is no less central in cooperation than in discord among nations.35 According to these authors, the distribution of capabilities among actors

critically affects both the prospects for effective regimes to emerge and persist in an

issue-area and the nature of the regimes that result, especially insofar as the

allocation of the benefits from cooperation is concerned. An early formulation of

this idea is the theory of hegemonic stability which interprets regimes as inter

national public goods that are in short supply unless a dominant actor (or hegemon) takes the lead in their provision and enforcement. Theorists of hegemonic stability doubt that regimes can be upheld in the absence of a strong leader who has a stake

in them. They admit, however, the possibility of a 'hegemonic afterglow', i.e. a

limited period of time in which the uncontested superiority of the leader has

vanished, but factors such as inertia, habit, or fear of instability resulting from

change work in favour of the regimes the once dominant state had established at the

height of its power.36 We have noted that neoliberals hark back to some realist notions when making

their comparatively optimistic case for the significance of international regimes,

acknowledging, for example, the importance of international anarchy and the

primacy of states in world politics. Realists have taken up this challenge by pointing out that their opponents' argument is flawed because it fails fully to appreciate the

meaning of those realist assumptions that neoliberals claim to have incorporated into their theory. In particular, anarchy not only creates fears of being cheated by one's cooperation partners; the lack of common government involves states in a

constant struggle for survival and independence denying them the luxury of being

egoists who, by definition, are indifferent to how well others do. Rather, they need to

take into account both absolute and relative gains when contemplating regime-based

cooperation with others. Since today's friend may be tomorrow's foe, states are

sensitive to relative gains in favour of their partners. Therefore, they may sometimes

abstain from cooperation even when it would be beneficial for them in absolute terms. The overall result for realist students of international institutions is that inter

national regimes are more difficult to create and harder to maintain than neoliberals

would have us believe. The likelihood for a regime to be put in place and to be stable

34 For the distinction between 'classical realists' (i.e. Morgenthau and his fellow combatants), 'neorealists' (whose leading representatives are Waltz and Mearsheimer), and 'post-classical realists' see Stephen G. Brooks, 'Dueling Realisms', International Organization, 51 (1997), pp. 445-77. The

latter group of authors has also been referred to as 'modified structural realists'. See Randall L.

Schweller and David Priess, A Tale of Two Realisms: Expanding the Institutions Debate', Mershon

International Studies Review, 41 (1997), p. 9. 35 See Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981);

Stephen D. Krasner, 'Global Communications and National Power: Life on the Pareto Frontier', World Politics, 43 (1991), pp. 336-66; and Joseph M. Grieco, Cooperation among Nations: Europe, America, and Non-Tariff Barriers to Trade (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990).

36 See Charles P. Kindleberger, 'Dominance and Leadership in the International Economy:

Exploitation, Public Goods, and Free Rides', International Studies Quarterly, 25 (1981), pp. 242-54; and David A. Lake, 'Leadership, Hegemony, and the International Economy: Naked Emperor or

Tattered Monarch with Potential?', International Studies Quarterly, 37 (1993), pp. 459-89.


is greatest when the expected gains are 'balanced' (at least for the most powerful members) such that relative losses do not accrue.37

Cognitivism?weak and strong

Cognitivists, too, have been sharply critical of the neoliberal approach to inter

national institutions. Yet the thrust of this criticism is directly opposed to that of the

realist one: from the cognitivist point of view, the problem with neoliberalism is not

that it has misconstrued some of the realist assumptions about the nature of world

politics. Rather, its limits as a theory of international institutions can be traced back

directly to various realist 'heritages' still operative in neoliberal theories. Thus,

cognitivists of all shades criticize realists and neoliberals alike for treating actors'

preferences and (perceived) options as exogenous 'givens', i.e. as facts which are

either assumed or observed, but not theorized about. By this move, according to

cognitivists, realists and neoliberals ignore or trivialize a significant source of

variation in international behaviour.

It is useful to distinguish two strands within the cognitivist school of thought in

regime analysis: 'weak' and 'strong' cognitivism.38 Weak (or minimalist) cognitivists focus on the role of causal beliefs in regime formation and change.39 According to

weak cognitivists, neoliberals and realists underrate both the degree of uncertainty which decision-makers face in many issue-areas today and their capacity for complex

learning, which extends to both means and ends.40 Uncertainty about causal

relationships creates a demand on the part of decision-makers for reliable issue

specific knowledge, which, in turn, can become a source of political influence for

those who can supply it.41 Weak cognitivists, therefore, have studied the role of

epistemic communities in international policy coordination and, more generally, the

conditions and mechanisms of governmental learning. If weak cognitivists stress the intellectual underpinnings of international institu

tions, strong (or maximalist) cognitivists?who also go by the names 'reflectivists'42

and 'constructivists'43?emphasize the social character of international relations. No

less than weak cognitivists, strong cognitivists are concerned with actors' knowledge,

37 See Joseph M. Grieco, Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest

Liberal Institutionalism', International Organization, 42 (1988), pp. 485-507. 38 See Hasenclever, Mayer, and Rittberger, Theories, pp. 136-9, 154-7. 39 See Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane, 'Ideas and Foreign Policy: An Analytical Framework',

in Goldstein and Keohane (eds.), Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change

(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 3-30. 40 See Joseph S. Nye, Jr., 'Nuclear Learning and US-Soviet Security Regimes', International

Organization, 41 (1987), pp. 371-402. For a useful review of the literature on learning in foreign

policy see Jack S. Levy, 'Learning and Foreign Policy: Sweeping a Conceptual Minefield', International Organization, 48 (1994), pp. 279-312.

41 See Peter M. Haas, 'Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination', in

Haas (ed.), Knowledge, pp. 1-35. 42

Robert O. Keohane, 'International Institutions: Two Approaches', International Studies Quarterly, 32

(1988), pp. 379-96. 43 Nicholas Greenwood Onuf, World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International

Relations (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1989); and Alexander Wendt, Anarchy is WTiat States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Polities', International Organization, 46

(1992), pp. 391-425.


but rather than causal beliefs they accentuate social knowledge (i.e. knowledge of

norms and understandings of self and other). This sociological stance brings them

into even sharper opposition to realists and neoliberals than their weak counter

parts. Strong (but not weak) cognitivists reject the conception of states as rational

actors, who are atomistic in the sense that their identities, power, and fundamental

interests are prior to international society and its institutions. States are as much

shaped by international institutions as they shape them.44 Strong cognitivists argue that any durable pattern of interaction affects actors' self-understandings and their

image of the others. In particular, institutionalized cooperation is likely to initiate a

process in which actors' egoism is dampened and actors increasingly respect, rather

than merely take into account, the legitimate interests of others.45 In the process,

cooperative norms are internalized, even when, initially, they were viewed by the

actors as mere instruments to further their individual goals. As a consequence,

strongly cognitivist theories tend to attribute a greater measure of effectiveness and

robustness to international institutions than do either realist or neoliberal ones.

Table 1 : Schools of Thought in the Study of International Regimes

Realism Neoliberalism Cognitivism (especially 'strong

cognitivism')

Central Variable

Metatheoretical

Orientation

Behavioural Model

Institutionalism

power

rationalist

relative gains seeker

weak

interests

rationalist

absolute gains

maximizer

medium

knowledge

sociological

role player

strong

Note: A school's 'institutionalism' is measured by the causal significance (i.e. the effectiveness

and robustness) that it attributes to international regimes. This dimension reflects the fact

that, although scholars of different paradigmatic orientations agree that institutions make a

difference in world politics, they systematically disagree on how large that difference is.

If realists and neoliberals portray states as utility maximizers, the behavioural

model that underlies strong cognitivism is that of a 'role player'.46 Role-playing at

the international level occurs when governments perceive obligations vis-?-vis other

states and the community of states to be real and binding (although they do not

44 See Alexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall, 'Institutions and International Order', in Ernst-Otto

Czempiel and James N. Rosenau (eds.), Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges: Approaches to

World Politics for the 1990s (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1989), pp. 51-73. 45 See Alexander Wendt, 'Collective Identity Formation and the International State', American Political

Science Review, 88 (1994), pp. 384-96. 46 See Oran R. Young, 'International Regimes: Toward a New Theory of Institutions', World Politics,

39 (1986), pp. 117-21. Note that both models are idealizations, which, even according to their

proponents, match reality only up to a point.


always honour them). In a world of role-players international norms operate as an

essential yardstick in states' selecting of foreign policy goals and options.47 A role

player making a decision asks what is appropriate for it to do in a given situation, rather than how it can maximize its individually defined goals.48 The concept is not

to imply that international roles are highly differentiated, although examples of

specific roles which are defined by specific (informal) rights and duties do exist in the

international society as well. Think of the traditional role of the balancer or even

that of the 'world's policeman'.

Integrating theories of international regimes: open doors and dead ends

Contextualizing rationalist approaches to international regimes

In this section we try to lend substance to our first proposition, according to which

neoliberal and realist perspectives on international regimes not only have much in

common?which is generally admitted?but may well be combined to yield a more

satisfactory theory?a possibility which tends to be ignored or downplayed by the

protagonists of the debate.49

Realists and neoliberals have recently been engaged in an intense dispute about

which of the two schools is better equipped to analyse and explain international

regimes and other phenomena of world politics. A remarkable feature of this dispute is that both realists and neoliberals have suggested that the members of the other

camp are not altogether wrong but that their theoretical propositions can be seen as

a special case of one's own account of international politics and regimes. Realists

have argued that their approach to international regimes subsumes neoliberalism, and neoliberals have made the inverse claim. For instance, Robert Keohane, a

leading neoliberal, has observed: 'In comparing neoliberal institutionalism with

neorealism we must understand that neoliberal institutionalism is not simply an

alternative to neorealism, but, in fact, claims to subsume it'.50 Conversely, Joseph Grieco, a prominent 'post-classical' realist, has pointed out that, by virtue of its

recognition of states' concerns with both absolute and relative gains, 'realism

provides a more comprehensive theory of the problem of cooperation than does

neoliberal institutionalism'.51

As claims about priority and subordination among theoretical positions these

statements are in sharp opposition to one another. There is, however, a notable common denominator suggesting that students of international regimes who adhere

to a rationalist mode of analysis (as do both neoliberals and realists) are likely to

make more progress on their project by seeking to enlarge and exploit these

47 See Thomas M. Franck, The Power of Legitimacy among Nations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

48 The alternative behavioural models implicit in this juxtaposition are spelt out in greater detail in the

final section of this article. 49 The word 'possibility' needs stessing, for our argument in this article is mainly theoretical, and cannot

and will not anticipate the results of empirical testing. 50

Keohane, International Institutions, p. 15. 51

Grieco, Anarchy', p. 503.


Theory of State Motivation

Linking Given Situations/

Relationships to Contexts

(see below)

selects

'Realist' Context:

Relative Gains Are Important

1 Neoliberal 'Context':

Relative Gains Are Not Important

implies validity of

Realist Hypotheses about Regime

Formation and Change

Neoliberal Hypotheses about Regime

Formation and Change

derive

Explanation/ Prediction

Explanation/ Prediction

Figure 1. Structure of a contextualized rationalist theory of international regimes.

commonalities than by going for full victory, as it were. The crucial point is that

neoliberals and realists concede to one another that the other side's arguments and

predictions are valid provided that certain conditions hold which their opponents have failed to acknowledge and to specify so far. If agreement on these conditions

could be reached, the door to a neoliberal-realist synthesis would appear to be wide

open. Therefore, future theoretical and empirical work along rationalist lines should

build upon this limited mutual recognition and aim at establishing the conditions or

contexts in which 'neoliberal' (i.e. optimistic) rather than 'realist' (i.e. pessimistic)

expectations about international regimes are likely to apply and vice versa.52 Serious

efforts towards this end might not only further our understanding of international

regimes but also reveal a broader zone of agreement between these two schools than

has been perceived and acknowledged so far.

This consideration offers the prospect of a contextualized theory of international

regimes the formal structure of which is given by Figure 1. As indicated by the

Figure, advocating a synthesis of realist and neoliberal approaches to regimes along these lines is not tantamount to simply saying that sometimes one school will be

right and sometimes the other. The specification of the contexts or conditions under

52 See Robert Powell, Absolute and Relative Gains in International Relations Theory', American

Political Science Review, 85 (1991), pp. 1303-20. For a sophisticated book-length study of the role of

contexts in shaping state behaviour, see Gary Goertz, Contexts of International Politcs (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1994).


which different propositions (i.e. realist or neoliberals ones) apply must be

theoretically grounded and testable, i.e. it must, at least in principle, allow for

predictions before the fact. Fortunately, the two literatures are rich with observations

and arguments which can be mined in an attempt to construct such a contextualized

rationalist theory of regimes. Much of the recent debate between realists and neoliberals has centred on the

significance of relative gains orientations in international politics. There are two

issues here. First: what difference does it make whether, in a given situation, states

seek absolute or relative gains? And second: when are states actually preoccupied with relative gains? We look at the two issues in turn because both are relevant for

the rationalist synthesis we are proposing. The first issue refers to the consequences of relative gains concerns. Assuming that

states at least sometimes take a strong interest in doing better or, at a minimum, not

less well than their cooperation partners, what difference (if any) does this motiva

tion make for the prospects of international cooperation and for the nature and

efficacy of international regimes? Neoliberals have argued that regimes are created and maintained by states for the

sake of certain functions they serve in mixed-motives situations.53 In particular,

regimes help states to cooperate for mutual benefit by reducing uncertainty and

informational asymmetries. Thus, regimes that include verification rules and

procedures reduce states' fears of being cheated by their partners, permitting them to

focus on the benefits from cooperation. The case that comes to mind immediately is

the nuclear non-proliferation regime, in which the International Atomic Energy

Agency is entrusted with monitoring members' compliance with the substantive

regime provisions.54

Realists have responded that the neoliberal argument is flawed because it is based

on the untenable assumption that states care only for absolute gains.55 This assump

tion, according to realists, does not concur with the fact that states, even as they are

cooperating peacefully, do not cease to be competitors for power and wealth. Hence, assurance that regime members live up to their promises may not be enough: states

fear that others reap the lion's share of the gains from cooperation and that, over

time, this relative advantage may place them in a position where they can implement a policy that hurts their less successful cooperation partners.56 Threats to the

military security of a state are an extreme form of such a policy, but other, less

spectacular, dangers also exist: for instance, a state may be able to turn its relative

gains into a permanent bargaining advantage, permitting it to force even better deals

upon its partners in the future. Thus, an agreement between two states to liberalize an important industrial sector (say, microelectronics) may generate sizeable welfare

gains for both parties; yet, at the same time, the accord may help one state's firms to

increase their market shares up to a point where the other state confronts the

possibility that its very industrial or technological base and hence its ability to have

a decisive say in international economic deliberations may be at risk.57

53 See Keohane, 'Demand'; and Analysis'. 54 See M?ller, 'Regimeanalyse'. 55 See Grieco, Anarchy'. 56 See Waltz, Theory, p. 105. 57 See Grieco, Cooperation; and Michael Mastanduno, 'Do Relative Gains Matter? America's Response

to Japanese Industrial Policy', International Security, 16 (1991), pp. 73-113.


The realists may be quite right, but does it follow that regimes are absent or

inconsequential in situations where relative performance matters? Perhaps the

functional argument advanced by the neoliberals is only incomplete and can be

extended in a straightforward manner to take into account both obstacles to inter

national cooperation: fear of cheating and relative gains concerns.

Interestingly, realist as well as neoliberal authors have suggested that, in a

situation where states are unwilling to put up with gaps in gains from cooperation in

favour of their partners, international regimes need not be irrelevant, but may in fact

assume additional functions the purpose of which is to mitigate members' relative

gains concerns.58 Thus, international regimes often include stipulations providing for

differential treatment of weaker partners who are less well able to exploit the oppor tunities resulting from regime-based cooperation. A case in point is the Generalized

System of Preferences by which the international trading regime sought to accom

modate the developing countries who feared that full acceptance of the GATT

principles might hamper rather than assist them in their efforts to catch up with the

industrialized world.59 Regimes may also serve as institutional frameworks to

facilitate the arrangement of side-payments to improve the relative performance of

otherwise dissatisfied actors. Thus, the regular review conferences prescribed by the

procedural component of many regimes allow relatively disadvantaged states to

voice their concerns about the skewed distribution of gains and to push for

corrections.

Owing to the competitive approach that has dominated the scholarly discussion so far, insufficient attention has been paid to this somewhat surprising turn of the

debate. Surely, empirical research has yet to establish whether (and when) regimes may indeed serve the purpose of helping states to manage relative gains concerns

and how this function is reflected in their normative and procedural content. Yet, for

the time being, this can be regarded as an excellent example for how realist and

neoliberal arguments may be made to work together to produce interesting new

hypotheses about international institutions.60 In light of these considerations, a contextualized rationalist theory of inter

national regimes would be concerned with three types of situations or contexts.

Strategic situations would first be distinguished according to whether or not they are

58 See Joseph M. Grieco, 'Realist Theory and the Problem of International Cooperation: Analysis with an Amended Prisoner's Dilemma', Journal of Politics, 50 (1988), pp. 600-24; Grieco, Cooperation, pp. 233^; Otto Keck, 'The New Institutionalism and the Relative-Gains-Debate', in Frank R. Pfetsch

(ed.), International Relations and Pan-Europe: Theoretical Approaches and Empirical Findings

(M?nster: Lit, 1993), pp. 35-62; and Robert O. Keohane and Lisa L. Martin, 'The Promise of

Institutionalist Theory', International Security, 20 (1995), pp. 45-6. 59 See Finlayson and Zacher, 'GATT', pp. 293-6; and Bernard Hoekman and Michel Kostecki, The

Political Economy of the Global Trading System: From GATT to WTO (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 237-8.

60 Note that our argument for using a strategy of contextualization to combine realist and neoliberal

insights into international institutions does not hinge upon the truth of this particular, 'post-classical realist', account of international regimes under conditions of significant relative gains concerns. For

example, if it turned out that relative gains concerns have much more devastating effects on

international cooperation than the above considerations suggest (as some more traditionally inclined

realists might argue), part of the content of the contextualized theory, but not its form or structure (as

given in Figure 1), would have to be altered. For an argument indicating that the cooperation

inhibiting effect of relative gains concerns is easily overrated see Duncan Snidal, 'International

Cooperation Among Relative Gain Maximizers', International Studies Quarterly, 35 (1991), pp. 387-402.


Table 2: Contexts and Hypotheses in a Rationalist Synthesis

Context

Hypotheses

Non-problematic

Social Situations

(Zero-Sum or

Harmony)

Relative-Gains

Dominated

Situations

('Realist Situations')

Absolute-Gains

Dominated

Situations

('Neoliberal Situations')

Overall Likelihood of Regime Creation

very low low high

Factors Affecting Likelihood of

Regime Creation

Regime Features

power structure

(in zero-sum

situations)

imposed regime with skewed

distribution of gains (in zero-sum

situations)

availability of

regime formula

securing balanced gains

balanced gains; mechanisms making

gains more

'equitable'

issue-density;

situation-structure

(PD, Battle etc.)

'contract' with

compliance

mechanisms (PD) or

'convention'

(Battle)

Regime Stability very low

(in zero-sum

situations)

low high

Note: In a situation of Harmony, a rationale for regime-building is very hard to imagine,

given that each player receives its most-preferred outcome and each player's choice is not

contingent on what the other does. (See Arthur A. Stein, Why Nations Cooperate: Circum

stance and Choice in International Relations (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 29-30.) Therefore, the second, third, and fourth dimensions in this Table, which presuppose

the contrary to be the case, do not apply to Harmony situations.

socially problematic. A problematic social (or mixed-motives) situation is one in

which the uncoordinated pursuit of one's individual interest may result in a

collectively suboptimal outcome.61 This is true of neither zero-sum nor Harmony situations. In such non-problematic situations the theory would expect international

regimes not to be created or to be inconsequential, if they are.62 (Some power theorists have challenged the assumption that common interests are a conditio sine

qua non of regime-building, pointing out that dominant actors sometimes impose

regimes on weaker ones, although with limited success.)63 Conversely, if the game is

one of mixed motives such that cooperation is desirable from the point of view of

the actors, but may fail to come to pass nevertheless owing to various obstacles (as

61 For the concept of a problematic social situation see Z?rn, Interessen, pp. 153-61. The term 'mixed

motives game' was coined by Thomas Schelling. See his The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press, 1960), p. 89. 62

Harmony is a symmetrical game defined by the preference ordering: CC>DC>CD>DD. Harmony

poses no cooperation problem, because each player prefers to cooperate irrespective of what the other

does. Neither are zero-sum situations problematic in this technical sense: there is no possibility for

individual and collective interpretations of rationality to fall apart in a zero-sum game, because every outcome is Pareto-efficient. See Stein, Why Nations Cooperate, pp. 16-18, 25-6.

63 See Stephen D. Krasner, 'Sovereignty, Regimes, and Human Rights', in Rittberger (ed.), Regime

Theory, pp. 139-67. See also Oran R. Young, 'Regime Dynamics: The Rise and Fall of International

Regimes', in Krasner (ed.), International Regimes, pp. 100-101.


specified by neoliberals and realists), international regimes would be considered

possible. At this point a second distinction would be introduced: between prob lematic social situations in which actors are exclusively or mainly concerned with

absolute gains and situations in which relative gains concerns are dominant. The

theory would go on to postulate that in the first type of situation neoliberal

hypotheses (regarding regime formation, stability etc.) apply, whereas in the latter

type of situation those hypotheses that have been advanced by realists are

appropriate. Table 2 uses familiar neoliberal and realist expectations to outline some

of the resulting theoretical relationships.64 Since the presence of relative gains concerns makes a difference for international

regimes, it is worthwhile asking when states can be expected to care about how well

others do as compared to themselves. This is where the second issue of the recent

realist-neoliberal debate comes in: under what circumstances are states concerned

with relative gains? Even realists such as Grieco readily admit that relative gains con

cerns are not a constant but vary considerably over relationships and across issue areas. The implications of this observation for a contextualized rationalist theory are

obvious: constructing such a theory becomes a matter of specifying the conditions

under which relative gains concerns are severe and the conditions under which they are slight or completely dominated by calculations of absolute gain. Grieco has

presented a list of such conditions in his discussion of the determinants of states'

sensitivity to relative losses.65

According to Grieco, states' intolerance for relative losses is influenced by both

the present and the past of the relationship concerned. It makes a difference whether

one's (potential) cooperation partner is a longtime ally or a longtime foe; whether

the states in question are at the brink of war or are members of a Deutschean

pluralistic security community.66 Thus, it can be hypothesized that cooperation between France and Germany today is considerably less strongly inhibited by relative gains concerns than it was before 1914 or in the interwar period. Moreover, relative gains concerns tend to be suppressed when the states concerned share a

common adversary67 or when the power difference between them is so large that no

conceivable gap in payoffs from cooperation is likely to affect their relative positions to a noticeable degree.68 Both conditions were met in the transatlantic relationship

during the Cold War and, thus, may help to explain the unusually high level of

institutionalized cooperation in this region.69 States whose power base is or appears to be shrinking tend to be more sensitive to relative losses than, e.g., rising

hegemons. This hypothesis may be illustrated by the development of US-Japanese trade relations since World War II, where the United States, who had initially tolerated considerable asymmetries in openness, has increasingly insisted on specific

65

For additional realist and neoliberal hypotheses regarding international regimes which are directly linked to the relative vs. absolute gains issue and therefore might be included in the proposed

synthesis see Grieco, Cooperation, pp. 227-9.

See Grieco, 'Realist Theory', pp. 610-13; and Cooperation, pp. 45-7. 66 Karl W. Deutsch et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization

in the Light of Historical Experience (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957). 67 See Joanne Gowa, 'Bipolarity, Multipolarity, and Free Trade', American Political Science Review, 83

(1989), pp. 1245-56. 68 See Duncan Snidal, 'Relative Gains and the Pattern of International Cooperation', American Political

Science Review, 85 (1991), p. 725, n. 33. 69 See Schweller and Priess, 'Tale', p. 20.


reciprocity, i.e. reciprocity which is defined as balanced outcomes.70 Moreover, the

nature of the issue is important.71 Cooperation in economic issue-areas is less likely to be inhibited by relative gains concerns than security cooperation. Also, states

(ceteris paribus) are the more strongly concerned with how well their partners do as

compared to themselves, the more easily the gains at stake are transformed into

relative capabilities (i.e. military strength or bargaining power). Grieco's concise discussion of variables affecting the severity of relative gains

concerns is most relevant to those interested in constructing a contextualized

rationalist theory of international regimes. It provides an excellent starting point for

the development of what might be called a theory of state motivation, i.e. a theory which specifies the kinds of situation or relationship in which absolute gains seeking dominates relative gains concerns and vice versa. Such a theory would be a necessary

component of the desired synthesis, because it would provide the a priori foundation

needed to infer, with respect to a given problematic social situation, as to whether

realist or neoliberal hypotheses about international regimes apply.72 We refer to Grieco's analysis as a starting point (if an excellent one) rather than

as an accomplishment for two reasons: First, Grieco fails to explicate in detail the

rationale (or rationales) that account for the items on his list, although he is clear

that perceptions of threat are of critical importance; as a result, the mutual

relationships and the relative weights of the variables he adduces are difficult to

assess. Second, his discussion (not surprisingly) displays a realist bias. Thus, he

expects 'every state's [sensitivity to relative losses] to be greater than zero in virtually all of its cooperative relationships'.73 It is true that whether or not Grieco is correct

on this count is an empirical question. But it is equally true that there is no a priori reason for building the desired theory of state motivation on such a narrow base. It

is not even necessary to confine oneself to system-level arguments and variables.74

Thus, the literature on the democratic peace suggests that the stable peace that exists

among democracies virtually eliminates relative gains concerns as an obstacle to

cooperation between states with this type of polity.75 70 See Robert O. Keohane, 'Reciprocity in International Relations', International Organization, 40

(1986), pp. 1-27; and Wayne Sandholtz and John Zysman, '1992: Recasting the European Bargain', World Politics, 42 (1989), p. 124.

71 See Charles Lipson, 'International Cooperation in Economic and Security Affairs', World Politics, 37

(1984), pp. 1-23. 72 Without such a foundation, not only are we unlikely to move beyond the 'grab-bag' stage of

theorizing, but our synthesis is likely to be non-falsifiable. 73

Grieco, Cooperation, pp. 46-7. This is in contrast to Robert Jervis's observation that 'when a state

believes that another not only is not likely to be an adversary, but has sufficient interests in common

with it to be an ally, then it will actually welcome an increase in the other's power' ('Cooperation under the Security Dilemma', World Politics, 30 [1978], p. 175). See also Gowa, 'Bipolarity', p. 1249.

74 A systems-level argument locates the causes of state behaviour not in attributes of the states (units) themselves (e.g. their domestic institutions), but in the way they are related to one another (e.g. the

anarchical structure of international politics). See Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War: A

Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959). Both realism and neoliberalism

emphasize systemic influences on state behaviour; by contrast, liberalism is a unit-level theory. See

Andrew Moravcsik, 'Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International Polities', International Organization, 51 (1997), pp. 513-53.

75 See Thomas Risse-Kappen, Cooperation Among Democracies: The European Influence on US Foreign

Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 30. Valuable sources for the democratic

peace proposition include Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold

War World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); James Lee Ray, Democracy and

International Conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1995); and Michael E. Brown, Sean Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller (eds.),

Debating the Democratic Peace (London: MIT Press, 1996).


To sum up, both perspectives, neoliberalism and realism, might offer valid insights into the nature and efficacy of international regimes once we adopt the reading that

their predictions presuppose different, indeed complementary, contexts of action. To

unleash the potential for synthesis dormant in this complementarity, a systematic

exploration is needed of the variables (at both the systems- and unit-levels of

analysis) that influence the strength of relative gains concerns and, hence, the nature

of the context in which choices are made. Before we move on to an illustration of

how this approach may be used to explain particular instances of regime-building, one caveat is in order. On the preceding pages we have spelt out the case for a

structured division of labour among specific (postclassical) realist and neoliberal

approaches to international regimes. We have not advocated an emcompassing

synthesis of the realist and neoliberal perspectives on world politics. Nor do we

intend to imply that each and any 'power-based' (realist) or 'interest-based' (neo

liberal) account of international institutions can or should become part of the

synthesis we have outlined. Indeed, there is reason to suspect that attempts to come

up with an all-inclusive merger of realist and neoliberal theories of international

regimes are misguided, given that both neoliberalism and realism are loosely defined, and not perfectly homogeneous, 'schools of thought' rather than well-specified and

internally consistent 'theories'. Realism, in particular, has given rise to diverse

perspectives on international institutions, the reconciliation of which in a single, coherent theory?whether or not it includes a neoliberal component?may be very difficult at the least.76

Illustrating the theory: the case of conventional arms control in Europe

The contextualized rationalist theory of international regimes whose structure and

main components we have described may be used to shed light on the history of

conventional arms control in Europe since the early 1970s.77 As we shall argue, this

history breaks down in two periods: an earlier period in which intolerance for

relative losses is high, and a later period in which relative gains concerns are

attenuated and the parties to the conflict can focus on absolute gains. Accordingly, actors' behaviour in the first period conforms to realist expectations. In particular,

regime-based cooperation does not come about. Conversely, in the second period

76 Even post-classical realists sometimes appear to differ in quite fundamental ways. Thus, both Krasner

and Grieco emphasize the role of power in processes of regime formation, but the former seems to

focus on power as a means (or 'coordination device'), whereas the latter appears to be more interested

in power as a goal of statecraft ('positionalism'). As a result, Grieco expects regimes to produce a

'balanced' distribution of gains for their members (such that the pre-cooperation distribution of

power is preserved), whereas Krasner expects power asymmetries to be reflected in the distribution of

gains from regime-based cooperation. See Krasner, 'Global Communications' and Grieco, 'Anarchy'. 77

The following illustration should not be mistaken for an attempt to test the theory. A single case, even

if it permits several independent observations over time, can hardly sustain such far-reaching conclusions as are involved in carrying out a theory test. Moreover, as we have indicated, important details of the theory have yet to be specified. Hence, a test at this stage would be premature. WTiat we

seek to provide is a 'plausibility probe' suggesting that the theory is promising enough to warrant the

effort of working it out more fully and subjecting it to rigorous tests. For the concept of a plausibility

probe see Harry Eckstein, 'Case Study and Theory in Political Science', in F. I. Greenstein and N. W.

Polsby (eds.), Handbook of Political Science, vol. VII (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1975), pp. 79-138.


state behaviour assumes a more 'neoliberal' character and the actors finally succeed

in establishing a regime regulating the deployment of conventional forces in Europe. This change in behaviour can be attributed to a (partial) change in the context in

which the parties interact.

During most of the Cold War, Europe saw the highest peace-time concentration

of conventional forces worldwide.78 Both sides, NATO and the Warsaw Pact, were

trapped in a security dilemma which not only produced high costs in terms of

defence expenditures, but persistently defied the opponents' unilateral efforts to

secure higher levels of security for themselves by improving (or 'modernizing') their

military capabilities. On the contrary, the situation was perceived as rather unstable, and fears of a surprise attack were widespread, particularly among Western security

experts and military planners who pointed to what they perceived as a clear and

threatening superiority of the Warsaw Pact with regard to both troops and tanks.

Collective efforts to stop the arms race and to reach agreement on ceilings for

conventional armament and personnel in Europe began in 1973, when the Soviet

Union agreed to enter into negotiations over conventional forces with the US and its

European allies. These negotiations, which took place in Vienna and which, in the

West, came to be known as MBFR ('mutual balanced force reduction') talks, came

about as part of a package deal in which NATO had accepted the Warsaw Pact's

long-standing demand for a Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe

(CSCE), in which the West was to recognize the territorial status quo in Europe.

Early agreement on broad principles notwithstanding, the negotiations at Vienna

soon bogged down on the details. The parties agreed that the security of neither side

must be reduced by the regime to be created and that the goal should be parity of

forces, but these areas of consensus proved inconsequential so long as NATO and

the Warsaw Pact were unable to reach agreement on the characteristics of the status

quo.

Most important, the Eastern bloc denied the very existence of the imbalance that

worried decision-makers in the West. At the same time, it did not consent to on-site

inspections as a means of verifying the data that it produced in support of its

contention. In addition, the Eastern side was unwilling to consider extending the

zone of application of a treaty to the Western part of the Soviet Union, which, as

NATO feared, would allow the Warsaw Pact quickly to move large quantities of

weaponry to the centre of Europe whenever it wished to. In response to this, NATO

refused to talk about a reduction in armaments and wanted a treaty to obligate the

parties to troops reductions only. Moreover, these cuts would have to be asym

metrical, given NATO's analysis of the existing balance of forces. Neither demand

was acceptable to the Warsaw Pact, however, as was NATO's refusal to negotiate

upper levels for air and naval forces, where the Soviet Union perceived the West to

have an advantage. Thus, the negotiation stances of both sides tended to be

78 Useful narratives and analyses of the efforts to reach a conventional arms accord for Europe include

Reinhard Mutz, Konventionelle Abr?stung in Europa: Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland und MBFR

(Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1984); Coit D. Blacker, 'The MBFR Experience', in Alexander L. George,

Philip J. Farley and Alexander Dallin (eds.), US-Soviet Security Cooperation: Achievements, Failures, Lessons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 123^13; Wolfgang Zellner, Die Verhandlungen ?ber konventionelle Streitkr?fte in Europa: Konventionelle R?stungskontrolle, die neue politische Lage in

Europa und die Rolle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1994); and Richard A.

Falkenrath, Shaping Europe's Military Order: The Origins and Consequences of the CFE Treaty

(London: MIT Press, 1995).


inflexible, and neither side was willing or able to offer substantial concessions in

order to permit the formation of a mutually beneficial security regime. As a result, the talks continued for more than ten years without producing any

tangible results. Whatever prospects of success there were evaporated when d?tente, whose offspring the MBFR negotiations had been, gave way to the 'second Cold

War' at the end of the 1970s. Although the talks were not formally abandoned until

1987, for more than half a decade a substantial treaty limiting conventional forces in

Europe seemed more remote than ever. Within a few years, however, this picture

changed unexpectedly and dramatically. Owing to the Gorbachev-Shevardnadse

turnaround in Soviet foreign and security policy, the stalemate could be overcome, and a process was launched that culminated in the formation of a conventional arms

control regime for Europe. Soon after Gorbachev's coming to power, the Soviet Union indicated that it was

prepared to take a new approach to the whole range of security issues that had

overshadowed its relations with the West. What is more, Gorbachev soon began to

suit the action to the words. Largely due to the new conciliatory attitude of the

Soviet Union, NATO and the Warsaw Pact succeeded in creating two important

security regimes within a short period of time: the regime defining 'confidence- and

security-building measures', which replaced the set of vague, loosely-knit, and

ineffective rules that had been agreed upon as part of the Helsinki Accord,79 and the

regime that sanctioned the 'double-zero solution' to the once highly contentious

Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) issue.80 In both cases, the Soviet Union

had departed from its traditional policy of prioritizing military secrecy over the

mutual confidence and enhanced sense of security that can emerge from increased

transparency, and consented to intrusive verification provisions. Encouraged by these developments and by a series of Soviet concessions (including the announce

ment to reduce its troops by half a million and to withdraw 50,000 men and 5,000 tanks from Eastern Europe), NATO accepted the Warsaw Pact's offer to enter into new talks on a conventional arms control regime for Europe.

These new Vienna talks, labelled negotiations on 'conventional forces in Europe' (CFE), proved highly successful. The most tangible outcome was an unprecedentedly

complex, far-reaching, and intrusive arms control agreement, which has become a

central pillar of the new European security architecture. Moreover, given the

intricate nature of the issues on the table, observers were amazed at the speed of the

negotiations, which officially began in March 1989 and ended in November the

following year. Finally, the agreement was not only signed but survived the turbulent

ratification period during which one of the two military alliances (or 'groups' in the

language of the treaty) that had negotiated the accord (the Warsaw Pact) as well as

one of the key parties to the agreement (the Soviet Union) broke up.81 The CFE Treaty, which applies to the area from the Atlantic to the Urals,

specifies regional numerical ceilings on both land and air forces, including tanks,

79 See James E. Goodby, 'The Stockholm Conference: Negotiating a Cooperative Security System for

Europe', in George, Farley and Dallin (eds.), US-Soviet Security Cooperation, pp. 144-72; and Volker

Rittberger, Manfred Efinger, and Martin Mendier, 'Toward an East-West Security Regime: The Case

of Confidence- and Security-Building Measures', Journal of Peace Research, 11 (1990), pp. 55-74. 80 See Thomas Risse-Kappen, Zero Option: INF, West Germany, and Arms Control (Boulder, CO:

Westview, 1988). 81 The treaty entered into force on July 17, 1992.


armoured combat vehicles, artillery, attack helicopters, and combat aircraft. The

parties undertake to destroy (or convert) their excess weaponry within a specified

period of time and subject to the results of an intra-group allocation process.82 The

treaty establishes an intrusive verification 'regime', which enables the parties to make sure that the provisions of the treaty continue to be honoured. The treaty meets

many of the long-standing Western demands such as those pertaining to the geo

graphical scope of the regime, the obligation to accept on-site inspections and, most

important, the distribution of cuts among the two 'groups', which takes account of

the pre-existing asymmetries in favour of the (former) Warsaw Pact countries. The

Soviet Union was not the only party to make concessions, though. NATO, too, showed greater flexibility than before, when it endorsed the inclusion of air forces

into the negotiations.83 What can the contextualized rationalist (realist-neoliberal) theory of international

regimes offer to make sense of this important episode in the history of East-West

relations? First of all, it accounts well for a general feature of this case: achieving

cooperation in the issue-area of conventional arms control in Europe proved to be a

difficult, protracted, and sometimes painful process, which was inhibited by mutual

mistrust and an aversity to risk that, for a long time, made it impossible for the

parties to compromise. From the theory's point of view this comes as no surprise. The (case-specific) values of most of the variables which, according to Grieco, determine the nature of the context of interaction suggest that realism's more

pessimistic perspective on international cooperation should go a long way towards

explaining the case.

Thus, the history of the mutual relationship of the two alliances was one of

enmity rather than amity. Far from sharing a common adversary, each was the

other's most frightening opponent. Differences in power between the two blocs were

too small to permit the stronger to ignore what happened to the weaker or to make

the weaker so helpless and dependent that it could hardly do anything to increase its

chances of survival. Gaps in gains from cooperation, therefore, could matter for the

fate of either bloc and its leader. Finally, the issue-area belonged to the realm of

security, and obviously many of the potential gains from cooperation (or defection) in this field are readily converted into military capabilities, which was bound to alert

the actors to the likely distributional implications of regime-based collaboration.

A second observation is even more significant, though. Reviewing the history of

the issue-area since the early 1970s, we find a temporal distribution of typically 'realist' and more nearly 'neoliberal' modes of behaviour that corresponds well with

a partial change in the context of interaction (as defined by our realist-neoliberal

theory).84 The narrative has brought out two periods, which are clearly set off from

82 This process is constrained by a rule that defines the maximum share of treaty-limited equipment that

any one party is allowed to possess ('sufficiency rule'). See Falkenrath, Europe's Military Order,

pp. xv-xvi. 83 Another important concession was NATO's decision, taken at the beginning of the negotiations, to

postpone its deliberations on a possible successor to the aging Lance short-range nuclear missile until

1992. See Falkenrath, Europe's Military Order, pp. 50-53. 84 The change is a partial one, because many of the context-defining features of the situation did not

change over time. This is not to say that the change was of minor importance. As we have noted, the

theory is as yet underspecified in that it fails to attach weights to the individual variables. Hence, we

cannot know in advance how much, or what kind of, change is required to tip the balance. Both

theoretical and empirical work is needed to up-grade the theory's specificity.


one another in terms of the actors' ability to focus on common interests and to resist

the temptation to engage in distributive bargaining. In the first period, which

roughly coincides with the MBFR talks, bargaining tactics were predominant on

both sides which indicate that the parties were unwilling to accept arrangements that, although beneficial to themselves, would have increased the other side's security to an even greater extent.85

Thus, up until late in the 1980s, the Soviet Union insisted on symmetrical cuts

which would have preserved the existing imbalance in its favour. While both sides

would have benefited from a lower level of deployed forces both economically and in

terms of national security, a more equal distribution of troops among the two

alliances would have reduced the Soviet Union's ability to launch a surprise attack on Central Europe, when she believed it necessary to protect her vital interests.

Conversely, NATO was not prepared to accept a deal that would not have done

anything about the perceived security gap in favour of the Warsaw Pact. Even if

agreement on this central object of contention had been reached it is unlikely that

the negotiations would have met with success given the sharp disagreement on

the verification issue. While NATO argued that, without adequate compliance mechanisms, a conventional arms reduction treaty would be useless and undesirable,

the Soviet Union and its allies refused to receive on-site inspections, arguing that the

West would use this opportunity to engage in espionage. Under a stringent verifica

tion scheme not only the West would have been likely to reap 'surplus' gains not

sanctioned by the regime; Eastern inspectors, too, would have had the chance to

obtain militarily relevant information over and above the information needed to

decide whether or not NATO honoured its obligations under the treaty. Given the

gap in openness and transparency that existed between the two social systems

(including the military sub-systems), however, the West would have stood to gain more from the proposed verfication 'regime'. The Soviet Union's stance on this issue,

therefore, provides additional supports for our hypothesis that relative gains con

cerns were pronounced during this period. If the parties' conduct in the first period is well accounted for by the?realist?

hypothesis that states were anxious to avoid relative losses even where this meant

foregoing opportunities for improving stability, the negotiation behaviour that

prevailed in the second period, which set in soon after the new Soviet leadership came into office, could hardly have occurred had the parties, and above all the Soviet

Union, not begun to up-grade the weight of absolute gains in their utility calcula

85 It might seem that this could not be the case. One might argue that in the security realm common

gains (if any) must be equally shared by the parties, because in this field the distinction between

absolute and relative gains breaks down: it makes no sense, so the argument goes, to say that country As security has been improved in an absolute sense, although at the same time it has lost security vis

?-vis its adversary B. In that case country As security will simply have not been improved at all. This

argument, however, equates security with power. (Moreover, it presupposes a bipolar situation.) A more plausible conceptualization distinguishes between two partially independent dimensions of

security: according to this definition, a state is the more secure the less likely is an attack on its

territory and it is the more secure the better are its prospects for victory in war. On this understanding of the concept of security, a state may well increase its security in absolute terms and at the same

time suffer a relative loss. This is when, due to some (bilateral) security arrangement, it wins on the

first dimension but loses on the second. This conceptualization also helps to distinguish realist and

neoliberal expectations in the field of security: realists, believing that states tend to base their

decisions in this realm on worst-case scenarios, do not expect states to be willing to trade superiority for a decreased probability for war to break out, whereas neoliberals predict just that.


tions. The new motivation is reflected in the fact that Gorbachev was prepared to

consent to NATO's long-standing demand for asymmetrical cuts, which would

increase stability (a joint security gain) and dissipate Western fears of a Soviet

surprise attack. Indeed, as we have noted, he did not eschew from enacting unilateral

troops reductions in a significant order of magnitude. This spectacular move helped to convince sceptical Western decision-makers of the seriousness of his intent and

increased pressure on them to make concessions of their own.

Although the East-West rapprochement mitigated the security dilemma, the

situation with regard to conventional forces continued to be a socially problematic one. More specifically, the basic features of the Prisoner's Dilemma were still intact.

Consequently, cheating remained a potential problem to be dealt with, even when

parties no longer worried so much about relative gains.86 Therefore?and in keeping with neoliberal expectations?the parties established extensive compliance mech

anisms to assure one another of sufficient levels of rule-compliance on the part of

both present and future governments. But whence the diminishing importance of relative gains that marked the second

period of the history of conventional arms control in Europe and appears to have

been the immediate cause of the cooperation that could be achieved? The combined

realist-neoliberal theory of regimes we have outlined in the preceding Section

accounts for this process in terms of a change in the context of interaction. As

Grieco notes, the severity of relative gains concerns likely to shape a given relation

ship at a given time is a function of this relationship's hypothetical location on a

continuum between all-out war and stable peace. The closer the relationship is to a

state of (actual) war, the more cooperation will be restrained by considerations of

relative gains. This is because states have to be careful not to help strengthen their

cooperation partners, when, and to the extent that, they perceive them to have

incentives to pursue a policy that hurts their vital interests. In a cold war relation

ship such perceptions are pervasive, whereas d?tente involves a slackening of the

adversaries' mutual fear and distrust such that the parties are encouraged to de

emphasize the expected distribution of gains in their deliberations about the

desirability of a given cooperative project. The reorientation of Soviet foreign and security policy in the mid-1980s had the

effect of moving the East-West relationship from a (recently restored) cold war to a

new d?tente which came much closer to the stable peace end of the continuum than

had its 1970s precursor. In the language of the theory this amounted to the creation

of a new context of interaction, in which rational actors could focus on absolute

rather than relative gains.87 Part of Gorbachev's famous 'new thinking' was that it

broke with the Leninist doctrine of the inherent aggressiveness of capitalist states.

Not only had it been increasingly difficult to deny that liberal democracies had

proven politically stable and economically successful, historical experience had

suggested to the new leadership that the threat they posed to the Socialist world had

86 Relative gains concerns intensify fears of cheating, because they increase the disutility of being double-crossed by one's cooperation partners.

87 A factor that, according to observers, contributed to the success and the speed of the CFE

negotiations was that civilian leaders on both sides deliberately reduced the influence of the military on the bargaining process. This is in contrast to the MBFR talks with their much greater involvement

of the military bureaucracy. Obviously, governments did no longer assume their interests to be best

served by the (realist) worst-case thinking which forms part of the professional role of military

planners. See Mutz, Konventionelle Abr?stung, p. 246 and Falkenrath, Europe's Military Order, p. 249.


been grossly exaggerated by the traditional Soviet theory of international relations

and that capitalism was indeed compatible with peace.88 Moreover, nuclear parity had made capabilities for launching a large-scale con

ventional offensive against Western Europe redundant as a deterrent. Indeed, civilian leaders in the Soviet Union began to realize that the attempt to increase

national security by clinging to an offensive force posture was likely to be self

defeating and detrimental, because it caused NATO to respond by enhancing its own military preparedness and placed a heavy burden on East-West relations.89

Traditional Soviet security policy had proven excessively costly in both economic

and political terms, and both types of costs were now seen as being intimately linked. In Gorbachev's strategy, improving relations with the West was a pre condition for the success of the internal reforms through which he sought to

overcome the economic crisis of the Soviet Union and to arrest its relative decline as

a superpower.90 In a nutshell, reviving d?tente was both possible and necessary from

the point of view of the new Soviet government. Whether or not this (sketchy) explanation of the formation of the CFE regime is

felt to be convincing in its own terms, it may be criticized for lacking 'causal depth'. Context change may have caused actors to reconsider their utility functions, making them place more weight on absolute gains than before, and this, in turn, may help to

explain why they achieved regime-based cooperation in an issue-area where this

hitherto had proven impossible. But then, how do we explain the change of the

context? Does the above analysis not leave the most interesting part of the story unaccounted for? The factor that contributed most to the context change is that the

Soviet Union began to see the world differently and to re-define its interests as a

result. But what accounts for this spectacular and consequential instance of govern mental learning? In the following Section we discuss two possibilities of developing

the rationalist synthesis so as to accommodate certain cognitive variables and, thus, to allow for deeper explanations of international regimes.

Using weakly cognitivist variables to supplement rationalist theories of regimes

The second proposition we wish to defend in this essay is that rationalist explana tions of international regimes may be supplemented and thus improved by a variant

of cognitivist theorizing which we referred to above as 'weak cognitivism'. The basic

idea here is that weakly cognitivist theories?i.e. theories which are concerned with

phenomena such as epistemic communities or simple and complex learning?may be

used to fill frequently admitted gaps in both neoliberal and realist approaches to

88 See Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry, 'International Sources of Soviet Change', International

Security, 16 (1991/92), pp. 89-90. 89 See Falkenrath, Europe's Military Order, pp. 37-8. 90 This case suggests that Grieco's hypothesis that relative decline increases the sensitivity for relative

losses may need to be qualified. It was rational (or, at least, not plainly irrational for the Soviet Union to accept short-term relative losses in various security issue-areas as part of a strategy that aimed at

halting and reversing an economic decline with its negative consequences for long-term national

security. Both nuclear deterrence and the relatively benign security environment (see Deudney and

Ikenberry, 'International Sources', pp. 82-97) can help to explain why, in the case at hand, this course

of action was (or could appear to be) a rational choice for a leader committed to the national

interest.


(a) Cognitive Variables Causally Preceding Rationalist Ones

Ideas State Interests Outcomes

help shape

(b) Cognitive Variables Causally Succeeding Rationalist Ones

State Interests Ideas Outcomes

intervene

Figure 2. Models of a rationalist-cognitivist synthesis.

the study of international regimes without violating the rationalist core of these

approaches. As a consequence, a fruitful division of labour among different schools

of thought need not be confined to realism and neoliberalism, but may extend to

some cognitivist approaches as well.

Integrating weakly cognitivist variables with rationalist explanations requires a

different form of synthesis, though. We have seen that realist and neoliberal

approaches to international regimes can be reconciled and organized into a single whole by specifying the conditions of validity of each, i.e. by theorizing the contexts

in, or conditions under, which realist and neoliberal predictions apply, respectively.

By contrast, rationalist and weakly cognitivist arguments appear to be working

together best when they are seen as addressing subsequent links in a single causal

chain.

As Figure 2 indicates, weakly cognitivist variables may be either causally prior or

causally posterior to the rationalist ones. This opens up two possibilities for a

division of labour between rationalist and (weakly) cognitivist theories of inter

national regimes. The first way in which weakly cognitivist theories may supplement rationalist

accounts of international institutions is straightforward, at least in principle: cogni tivists study features of a strategic (or choice) situation which are self-consciously left unexplained by the game-theoretic models that rationalists employ. Recall that a

game-theoretic analysis requires answers to three basic questions: (1) who are the

actors? (2) what are the options they perceive to have in the situation? (3) what are

the payoffs (or utilities) that the actors attribute to each possible outcome?91 With

these three pieces of information a game matrix can be constructed, which then can

be analysed, using the hypotheses rationalists have developed to account for both the

formation and the institutional attributes of regimes in varying decision environ

ments (such as Prisoner's Dilemma, Battle of the Sexes, etc.). In such analyses neither actors nor their behavioural alternatives nor their preferences are prob lematized. Rather, these essential components of rationalist analyses are used as

unexplained points of departure, which are either assumed or established ex post. Since actors' beliefs about cause-effect relationships have an influence on at least the

91 See Z?rn, Interessen, p. 324.


latter two of these components, i.e. perceived options and payoffs, weakly cognitivist theories that seek to illuminate the conditions of governmental learning and to

account for the careers of ideas may be adduced to fashion deeper explanations of

regimes and other outcomes.

The issue-area of trade provides a classical example of how new causal beliefs

may induce actors to redefine their interests:92 eighteenth century mercantilist

thought was premised on the idea that global welfare is fixed. As a result, inter

national trade appeared as a constant-sum game, in which incentives for cooperation or the creation of international regimes did not exist. By contrast, laissez-faire liberalism taught that global welfare is variable and can be enhanced by an

unrestricted exchange of goods and services, which meant that international trade

came to be seen as a variable-sum game (such as Prisoner's Dilemma or perhaps even Harmony) which was amenable to cooperation and regime-building.93 A

change in beliefs (i.e. learning in a neutral sense) helps to explain a change in the

constellation of interests, which, in turn, led to a change in policy.

Weakly cognitivist variables and models can also be employed to supplement, or

lend more causal depth to, explanations based on the contextualized rationalist

theory of regimes we have sketched above. Again, the case of conventional arms

control in Europe may help to illustrate our point. As we have seen, governmental

learning on the part of the Soviet Union was an important cause of the context

change that enabled NATO and the Warsaw Pact to focus on absolute rather than

relative gains in the issue area of conventional forces in Europe and, eventually, to

settle upon a mutually beneficial arms control agreement. Gorbachev's 'new

thinking' extended to both the basic assumptions and the strategic prescriptions

guiding Soviet foreign and security policy. Revisions of the former included a new

image of the adversary, who was no longer regarded as inherently aggressive and

imperialistic. Revisions of the latter?made possible by that new worldview and

driven by a better understanding of the security dilemma?were immediately relevant to the case at hand: first, given that, within the East-West setting, national

security was, to a large extent, indivisible, it should be sought primarily through

cooperative efforts that included the opponent; and second, military preparedness should not exceed the level of 'reasonable sufficiency', because excessive armament

was certain to breed mistrust and, by provoking counter-measures, likely to reduce

security in the longer run.94

Weakly cognitivist approaches have been used to explain the content and the

timing of the learning process that was at the root of the Soviet foreign policy revolution. Thus, Thomas Risse-Kappen has argued that structural and functional

models alone cannot account for the turnaround in the Soviet Union's foreign and

92 See Stein, Why Nations Cooperate, p. 120. 93

Strictly speaking, the latter applies when the situation is PD, but not when it is Harmony. As we have

noted above, in a situation of Harmony regime-building is unlikely, because cooperation emerges

spontaneously. Harmony in the trade case corresponds to a situation where each state believes cutting down tariffs is in its interest, even when the others do not follow suit. See Stein, Why Nations

Cooperate, pp. 29-30. 94 See Jeff Checkel, 'Ideas, Institutions, and the Gorbachev Foreign Policy Revolution', World Politics,

45 (1993), pp. 281. For a fuller account of these momentous changes refer to Checkel's recent book

Ideas and International Political Change: SovietlRussian Behavior and the End of the Cold War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).


security policy (and for the West's response to it)95 and have to be supplemented by arguments that not only take ideas seriously, but shed light on the conditions under

which particular ideas begin to have an impact on the choices of policymakers. In

his framework he emphasizes the role of transnational networks of experts and

politicians, who develop and spread new policy-relevant ideas, and the importance of the 'domestic structure' of the target countries, which determines how difficult it

is for a given set of ideas and their carriers to gain access to, and to influence, central

decision-makers. More specifically, Risse-Kappen argues that

some of the ideas that informed the reconceptualization of Soviet security interests and

centered around notions of 'common security' and 'reasonable sufficiency' originated in the

Western liberal internationalist community comprizing arms control supporters in the United

States as well as peace researchers and left-of-center political parties in Western Europe. This

community formed networks with 'new thinkers' in the foreign policy institutes and elsewhere

in the former Soviet Union.96

According to Risse-Kappen, these transnational contacts were instrumental in

transforming the new basic assumptions about the international system, the relation

of class values to human values, and the nature of capitalism into a coherent set of

foreign and security beliefs and maxims, which, as we have noted, downplayed

competitive (relative-gains oriented) stratagems in favour of a more cooperative and

inclusivist approach. While, in this first model of a rationalist-cognitivist division of labour, interests

and cognitive factors are combined such that the latter precede the former in the

causal chain, in the second type of synthesis of rationalist and cognitivist approaches the sequence is reversed: here ideas, rather than helping to explain preferences and

perceived options which, in turn, explain outcomes (see Figure 2a), intervene

between interests (which may or may not be accounted for in cognitivist terms) and

outcomes such as regime formation (see Figure 2b). In this approach to a rationalist

cognitivist synthesis, ideas operate as 'focal points', i.e. salient solutions to

negotiation problems which help the parties to coordinate their behaviour in a

mutually beneficial way.97 This approach is exemplified by Geoffrey Garrett and

Barry Weingast's intriguing study of the completion of the European Community's internal market in the late 1980s.98

The problem with conventional functional explanations of cooperation, according to Garrett and Weingast, is that they fail to take into account that actors in a mixed

motives situation usually face several possibilities for cooperating (i.e. multiple

95 Learning was not confined to the Soviet Union. At a minimum, the members of NATO had to learn

how to interpret the new and, to many, bewildering signals that came from the Kremlin (as had, of

course, the governments of the other Warsaw Pact states). 96 Thomas Risse-Kappen, 'Ideas Do Not Float Freely: Transnational Coalitions, Domestic Structures,

and the End of the Cold War', International Organization, 48 (1994), p. 186. For a cognitivist study

along similar lines which focuses on the domestic sources of Soviet 'new thinking' see Checkel, 'Ideas'. For additional insights on the impact of transnational actors on Soviet/Russian security

policy see Matthew Evangelista, 'Transnational Relations, Domestic Structures, and Security Policy in

the USSR and Russia', in Thomas Risse-Kappen (ed.), Bringing Transnational Relations Back In:

Non-State Actors, Domestic Structures, and International Institutions (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1995), pp. 146-88. 97 See Schelling, Strategy, pp. 57-8 and passim. 98

Geoffrey Garrett and Barry R. Weingast, 'Ideas, Interests, and Institutions: Constructing the

European Community's Internal Market', in Goldstein and Keohane (eds.), Ideas, pp. 173-206.


Pareto-improving equilibria99) which cannot easily be distinguished in terms of

efficiency and self-interest. Therefore, most problematic social situations are under

determined from a purely interest-oriented perspective: the variables employed by rationalists (i.e. efficiency and self-interest) do not suffice to explain the outcome. It is

only because of the post-hoc character of functional explanations100 that this

deficiency is often overlooked. This is where cognitive factors enter the scene: for, as

Garrett and Weingast point out, it is often the case that ideas which create convergent

expectations permit actors to coordinate their behaviour in a mutually beneficial way

and, at the same time, explain the specific content of the resulting regime. Consider the case of the completion of the EC's internal market. In the mid

1980s, the EC member states had strong incentives to launch a programme of trade

liberalization. Not only had their dependence on trade grown significantly in the

preceding years, there were also clear signs that they were losing ground vis-?-vis

their main overseas competitors, the United States and Japan, whose economies had

recovered much more quickly and vigorously from the recession triggered by the

second oil crisis. Under the circumstances a removal of barriers to the free move

ment of goods, services, labour, and capital promised substantial economic gains for

the members of the EC. But this fact at best explains why some institutional

arrangement was agreed upon to complete (or, more accurately, make progress on) the internal market. Since a number of options existed, which were not readily

distinguishable in terms of efficiency, this functional argument cannot explain which

of the institutional possibilities was chosen. The explanatory gap is filled by a 'focal

point' or salient solution that was provided by a decision of the European Court of

Justice of the late 1970s. In the Cassis de Dijon case the Court had asserted that the

Treaty of Rome required member states not to restrict the access of goods and

services which are legally produced and sold in another member state. Thus, the idea

of mutual recognition rather than, e.g., pervasive deregulation at the national level or extensive standardization at the supranational level, became the principle that the

completion of the internal market relied upon.101 Ideas are also important when the available equilibria vary in their distributional

outcomes, i.e. in situations akin to Battle of the Sexes. For example, in the issue-area of international communications states had to coordinate their use of the Geo

stationary Orbit, but had divergent preferences regarding the coordination principle to be adopted. Whereas the technologically leading states would have maximized

their gains under a first-come-first-served regime, the late-comers favoured at least a

modicum of ex ante planning consistent with the principle of equal sovereignty in

the distribution of frequencies and orbit slots.102 Under such circumstances, as

Krasner has convincingly argued, relative power comes into play as an alternative

coordinating mechanism. Garrett and Weingast concede this point. What is more,

they come up with an interesting attempt to extend their proposed synthesis of

99 A (Nash) equilibrium of a game is a constellation of choices such that each choice is optimal given the choices of the others. A Pareto-inferior outcome is an inefficient outcome in that at least one

actor could be made better off without making any of the other actors worse off. In game-theoretic

analyses of international relations, cooperation is modelled as a collective attempt to overcome

Pareto-deficient situations. 100 See Keohane, After Hegemony, p. 80. 101 See Garrett and Weingast, 'Ideas', pp. 187-91. 102

Krasner, 'Global Communications'; and Kai-Uwe Schrogl, Zivile Satellitennutzung in internationaler

Zusammenarbeit (K?ln: Carl Heymanns Verlag, 1993).


neoliberal and cognitivist approaches to include specifically power-based arguments. In so doing, they make use of the contextual approach to synthesis we have referred

to earlier. In particular, they hypothesize that

[t]he lesser the distributional asymmetries between contending cooperative equilibria and the smaller the disparities in the power resources of actors, the more important will be ideational

factors [relative to power factors]. Similarly, the effects of focal points will increase [and the

importance of the distribution of power decrease] with the actors' uncertainty about the

consequences of agreements or about relative capabilities. Thus, both power and ideas can be

expected significantly to influence the resolution of multiple-equilibria problems, but the relative explanatory power of each is likely to vary significantly with the context, [our

emphasis]103

It seems to us that this approach to specifying the interrelationship between power,

interests, and knowledge in the emergence and continuation of rule-based coopera tion holds considerable promise and should certainly be followed up and further

developed.

Limits to synthesis: rationalism and strong cognitivism

So far our presentation has displayed a great deal of optimism with regard to the

possibilities for the three schools of thought to achieve synergetic effects by pooling

(selected items of) their conceptual and theoretical resources. This optimism, however, comes to an end with our third proposition. We contend that, in regime

analysis, a 'grand synthesis'?one that also incorporates the perspective of the more

radical, or 'strong', cognitivists?is not feasible. A fruitful dialogue can be, and is

already being, entertained between 'economists' (i.e. rationalists) and 'sociologists'

(i.e. strong cognitivists)104 in the study of international regimes; but it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to imagine at this stage a fully-fledged rationalist

sociologist synthesis which would preserve the identities (i.e. the most fundamental

assumptions and concerns) of both approaches. The reason is that rationalists and

strong cognitivists are committed to ultimately incompatible epistemologies and, most of all, ontologies.

As to epistemology, strong cognitivists such as Friedrich Kratochwil, John Gerard

Ruggie or Robert Cox have made it clear that they hold the positivist theory of

knowledge to which neoliberal and realist scholars adhere responsible for a flawed

analysis of international norms.105 Positivism with its emphasis on observable facts

and objective measurement of variables directs scholars to focus on overt behaviour

at the expense of intersubjective understandings, thus missing, according to strong

cognitivists, the very essence of international regimes. Consequently, strong cogniti vists have argued the necessity of an interpretivist treatment of this subject, where

103 Garrett and Weingast, 'Ideas', p. 186. 104 For this terminology see Brian Barry, Sociologists, Economists and Democracy (London: Collier

MacMillan, 1970). 105 See Friedrich V. Kratochwil and John Gerard Ruggie, 'International Organization: A State of the Art

on an Art of the State', International Organization, 40 (1986), pp. 753-75; and Robert W. Cox, 'Social

Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory', in Robert O. Keohane

(ed.), Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 204-55.


the attempt to understand motives and actions from within replaces the quest for

explaining behaviour from without. Rationalists, in turn, have reaffirmed their

allegiance to what Keohane refers to as a 'sophisticated positivistic' explanation of

international institutions including the formulation and empirical testing of causal

hypotheses.106 Of the two obstacles to a 'grand synthesis' epistemology is pre

sumably the lesser one, however. This is for two reasons:

(1) On the 'subjective' side (i.e. with respect to the epistemological beliefs that

students of regimes hold), not all strong cognitivists identify with the rejection of empiricist methodologies that others deem necessary;107 conversely, rationalists who have begun to study the role of ideas have admitted that

interpretation cannot be ignored in such an endeavour.108

(2) On the 'objective' side (i.e. with respect to the epistemological beliefs that

students of regimes should hold), it is not clear whether the aspirations of

'science' and 'hermeneutics' are indeed irreconcilable. Philosophers have

seriously challenged the traditional opposition of explaining (the goal of

science) and understanding (the goal of hermeneutics) as basic methods of social research.109

Nevertheless, for all the uncertainty that surrounds this issue at the moment, there remains the claim made by some in the strongly cognitivist camp that an adequate study of those topics that sociologists in international theory are most interested in?such as the convincing force of arguments110 or the intersubjective knowledge that constitutes state identities111?requires methodological procedures and suggests

epistemological standards which fundamentally differ from those that are accepted as valid in mainstream rationalist analyses. And while the jury is out on the ultimate truth value of this claim (and may remain there for a long time to come), its face value is large enough to suggest that positivists will find it hard indeed to study these 'new' objects of research with the aid of their traditional tool-box.112

The second, presumably more formidable, obstacle inhibiting a fruitful and

intellectually appealing synthesis between rationalism and strong cognitivism in the

study of international regimes is ontology. Rationalists and strong cognitivists make

fundamentally different assumptions regarding the nature of actors and their inter

relationships. Rationalists scrutinize a system which is composed of a group of

interacting utility maximizers; strong cognitivists try to illuminate a society which is

106 Keohane, Analysis', p. 26.

107 See Wendt, Anarchy', pp. 393^1.

108 See Goldstein and Keohane, 'Ideas', pp. 26-9. 109

Others, of course, insist that there are indeed 'two stories' to tell?one from the outside, the other from the inside?neither of which ultimately can replace the other. See Martin Hollis and Steve

Smith, Explaining and Understanding International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). For an

excellent survey of the discussion see Thomas Haussmann, Erkl?ren und Verstehen: Zur Theorie und

Pragmatik der Geschichtswissenschaft (Frankfurt a.M: Suhrkamp, 1991). 110 See Friedrich V. Kratochwil, Rules, Norms, and Decisions: On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1989). 111 See Wendt, 'Collective Identity'. 112 For an argument to bring home the futility of studying linguistic and other institutional facts by

strictly positivist means see John R. Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 50-3.


formed by, as much as it forms, a community of role-players.113 To put it differently, rationalists and strong cognitivists disagree with respect to the very 'logic' that

shapes the behaviour of the actors they study: in the terminology introduced by James March and Johan Olsen, rationalists assume that states conform to a 'logic of

consequentially', whereas strong cognitivists reject this premise arguing that states, as other social actors, follow a 'logic of appropriateness'. An actor who 'operates'

according to a logic of consequentiality first examines its options and preferences and then calculates which of the possible courses of action has the best con

sequences in the light of these goals. By contrast, the 'software programme' that

determines the behaviour of an actor who conforms to a logic of appropriateness can be specified by the following reasoning:

(1) What kind of situation is this? (2) Who am I? What obligations have I undertaken?

(3) Which is the most appropriate action for me in this situation?

Thus, other than actors who conform to the logic of consequentiality, these actors

do not merely take norms and rules into account, their behaviour is driven by them.114

Again, our point may seem to be overstated and, indeed, many qualifications

might be added. Thus, rationalists have maintained that their approach does not

presuppose a denial of international society and admitted the context-dependence of

rational choice models.115 At the same time, few strong cognitivists contest that the

rationalist perspective is capable of providing insights into the behaviour of states in

the international arena. However, neither the mutual recognition that one's preferred mode of analysis is inherently limited, nor the mutual acknowledgement that the

respective alternative has its merits too, must be confused with evidence that the

approaches in question can work together productively. In fact, if our assessment of the obstacles that such a cooperation would confront is correct, evidence of this

kind is not likely to be produced. This is not to say that such cautious judgments and respectful attitudes as are expressed by these scholars are insignificant. They enhance the prospects for an open and fruitful scholarly dialogue from which both

sides as well as the study of international regimes as a whole can only benefit.

Conclusion

In this article we have drawn attention to some possibilities for theoretical synthesis we perceive to exist in the study of international regimes. These possibilities are

113 See Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (Basingstoke, UK:

Macmillan, 1977); and Wendt and Duvall, 'Institutions'. 114 See James G March and Johan P. Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of

Politics (New York: Free Press, 1989), p. 23. Note that the notion that behaviour is rule-driven is

consistent with the possibility that, in a given situation, actors have to make choices between different norms. Moreover, acting in accordance with the logic of appropriateness must not be mistaken for

simple-mindedness. The specification and application of the appropriate norm is seldom a trivial,

quasi-mechanical process, but one that leaves actors with considerable discretion. 115 See Duncan Snidal, 'The Game Theory of International Polities', in Oye (ed.), Cooperation, p. 45.

In te grating theories of in terna tional regimes 3 3

considerable and promising, but not unlimited. Nor is there a guarantee that the

more complex theories that would result from integrating different perspectives are

more satisfactory than the more simple approaches they are made of. Ultimately, the

value of a theory cannot be judged before it is empirically tested, and we have made no attempt to conduct such a test here. But this is a necessary and trivial caveat

(although perhaps increasingly less so in these post-positivist times), and certainly one that should not discourage students of international regimes from exploring the

potential synergetic effects that could be achieved by integrating different theoretical

approaches. We have suggested two such possibilities, which are not mutually exclusive:

(1) Neoliberalism and realism (or, at least, important strands within these two

schools of thought) might be joined to form a unified rationalist theory of

international regimes. The form of synthesis appropriate in this case is what we have called a 'contextualized' theory, i.e. a theory which includes an a

priori specification of the conditions under which the different theoretical

perspectives that enter into it are valid.

(2) Since both realism and neoliberalism treat actors' interests as exogenously

given, they might be supplemented by a set of approaches, which focus on

precisely this gap in rationalist theorizing. For these approaches we have

suggested the label 'weak cognitivism'. We have argued that the incorporation into the rationalist models of the ideational factors that are studied by weak

cognitivists would require a different form of synthesis, though: more speci

fically, we have proposed to base this synthesis on the notion that rationalist

and cognitive variables represent different links in a causal chain (with

cognitive variables either preceding or following rationalist ones).

Finally, we have cast doubts on the prospect for a comprehensive, or 'grand',

synthesis, one which includes even the more radical variants of cognitivism that we have termed 'strong cognitivism'. Sharp disagreements with regard to both

epistemology and ontology separate this group of scholars from their rationalist

colleagues, loading the dice heavily against a meaningful synthesis of their

perspectives. This should not be mistaken for bad news, however. As we have noted,

regime analysis has benefited a great deal from the competition of different

theoretical perspectives in the past, and there is no reason why this should change in

the future.

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